Wednesday, February 18, 2015

Remember how National's dirty crony deal with sky City was going to give us a "world class" convention centre for free (well, paid for by poor problem gamblers in South Auckland, but they don't vote National, and National doesn't care about the consequent social problems, so its "free" as far as National is concerned)? Something which would "put us on the map" and attract international business? It turns out that the proposed convention centre wasn't so "world class":

The capacity of the proposed International Convention Centre falls under the limits the founding study on the project said was needed to make it viable for a return to the economy.

"To improve economic growth New Zealand needs a centre that can accommodate an average of 3500 delegates in a plenary session," the report for Auckland Council and the Ministry for Tourism found in 2009.

Resource application documents filed with Auckland Council show the "Plenary Hall" has a maximum capacity of 3000 people - well short of an "average" 3500 delegates - and could drop further with talks of 10 per cent cuts to the centre.

So, we may in fact be getting a convention centre which is only 77% of "world class". In other words, not "world class" at all. So why are we giving Sky City all those gambling concessions again? They're not even pretending to deliver what they promised.